Thursday, January 13, 2011

Battle BBQ heats up!

After this morning's round of Battle BBQ between Texas and Hawaii, a reader posted a comment to one of our previous rounds. It's too good not to be given a post of its own. Others: Please respond. I'm getting the popcorn!

Y'all are all wrong. The best BBQ comes from the upper midlands of SC - Hemingway and Kingstree to be precise. The pork is cooked whole hog for 14 or so hours - slow cooked and if done right there is no need for sauce. However, since we are talking BBQ and not simply grilling meat; we need to talk sauce. From the Midlands and East of there, the sauce is a red vinegar based sauce and CAN be distinguished by the family that makes it. To the West and slightly north into NC, the sauce is a yellow, mustard based sauce. While I prefer the red sauce over the yellow, they are both far superior to the thick "St. Louis" style sauces you Texans tend to use. Nasty and far too Molasses based sweet for this true BBQ officiando. So sugar up your beef and keep it in Texas. Pork belongs to the REAL south and the great States of SC, GA, and god forbid, NC.

BT-The reason Texans leave sauce out is so that we can identify officious so-called "officiandos." We know that real difference between BBQ and grilling is not sauce; barbecue is slow, indirect heat, while grilling is high, direct heat.

While you will never hear me denigrate the noble pig or whole hog cooking, what's beautiful about Texas bbq is taking a tough, nearly inedible piece of meat (like beef brisket)and turning it into something beautiful. Brisket has such a range of flavors from fatty and juicy to lean and beefy that you miss out on by slopping sauce all over it. And how would you pick up the often subtle and nuanced differences between meat cooked with mesquite, hickory, pecan, oak, or apple wood when your brisket is slathered in vinegar, mustard, or molasses? And how would you appreciate that gorgeous, pink smoke ring or perfect bark?